World Englishes

 Variety of English in class.

 
 
Inner Circle
 English as a native language
 USA, UK, Australia, Canada , and New Zealand.
Outer Circle
 English as a second language
 Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Pakistan
Expanding Circle
 English as a foreign language
 China, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand
 
Outer and Expanding Circles are ESL and EFL speaking, respectively, they have been colonized by some
member countries in the Inner Circle making the varieties they speak as post-colonial.
 
Outer and Expanding do not observe initial aspirations of voiceless plosives such as p, t, k and these are
often perceived by Inner Circle countries as b,d,g Some speakers of Expanding Circle varieties, as in the
case of Japanese speakers, do not properly distinguish between r and l.
 
Intercultural communication a significant variable in communication.
 
Three Concentric Circles of English
The structural characteristics of these new varieties differ. This is brought about by the mother or
home languages of those who learn or acquire English. (Bautista and Gonzales ,2006)
 
There is continuum of basilectal, mesolectal, and acrolectal varieties of English within the same
speech community
o Acrolect
 Closest to the standard
o Basulect
 Digresses s thoroughly from it and comes closest to the pidgin.
o Mesolect
 middle variety is midway between the acrolect and basilect
 Edulects
 varieties resulting from certain types of
education ascertained by social class
 
Varieties of English are influenced by the local language(s) in various areas of their grammars and
exhibits specific phonological, lexical, syntatic and discoursal characteristics . for instance, in terms
of stress and rhythm, Outer and Expanding Circle varieties observe syllable-timed rhythm rather
than stress-timed rhythm.(Kachru and Nelson ,2006)
 
Syntactic features
o Questions-answering systems differ between Inner and Outer-Expanding Circles.
 the former observes the positive-negative system where the answer
follows the polarity of the question
 If the question is in the positive, the answer confirming
the assumption of the questioner is in the positive, and
the answer disconfirming the assumption is in the
negative
 the question is in the negative, the answer confirming
the assumption of the questioner is in the negative as
well, while the answer disconfirming the assumption of
the questioner is in the positive)
 the latter observes the agreement-disagreement system which poses
difficulty to speakers who follow the positive-negative system
particularly in interpreting the yes or no of the response unless it is
followed by a clarification
 I.e,Yes, I think you’re right; No that’s not so
 
Some English varieties in Southeast Asia
 
o Singaporean
 Actsy--- show off
 Misy --- nurse
 Chop--- rubber stamp
 Marina kids---youngster who spend their leisure time at or around
Marina Square a shopping centre
  Graduate Mothers---graduate (well-educated) married woman,
encouraged to have more children and accorded certain privileges in
Singapore
 
o Philippine
 Deep--- puristic or hard to understand
 Stick--- cigarette
 High blood--- tense or upset
 Blow-out--- treating someone with a snack or meal
 Motel--- hotel used for pre-marital or extramarital affairs
 Manualize--- prepare manuals
 Go ahead--- leave before others with host’s permission
 Studentry--- ‘student body
 Amboy--- Filipino perceived to be too pro-American
 Promdi--- from the province
 Behest loan--- unguaranteed bank loan given to presidential cronies
 Pulot boy--- boy who picks up tennis in a game
 Balikbayan box--- where Filipinos returning from abroad put all their
shopping
 
o Malaysian
 Antilog--- a male hated by a girl
 Popcorn--- a loquacious person
 Kachang--- peanuts, easy
 Slambar--- ‘relax
 Red spot or open shelf--- girls who are popular and those who are not
 Day bugs--- those who come to attend school but do not live in
residence halls
 
Just like any other new variety of English (Indian English, Singaporean English and Nigerian
English), Philippine English is legitimate, having its own grammatical, lexical, and syntactic
features.
 
Lexical features in Philippine English {Gonzales (1985, as cited in Bautista, 2000)}
 Preference for specific words and collocations specifically shall, could, such, wherein, of
(to signal possession);
 Unusual words and collocations, specific terms, and with combinations which may have
been originally confused with other collocations but which, because of frequent use, have
become fixed combinations in their own right (e.g, results to instead of results in); and,
 Unusual prepositional usage, including omission of prepositions in two words verbs,
addition of prepositions to verb phrases, local use of different prepositions in some
phrases following certain verbs or adjectives.
 
Syntactic features
 
1. Word-order features
o placement of the time adverb before the place adverb,
o adverb between verb and object
 o adverb between noun and prepositional phrase
o indirect object introduced by to between verb and direct object other
unusual adverb placement.
 
2. Use of articles
o g absence of the definite article
o unusual use of the definite articles
o absence of the indefinite article
 
3. Noun sub-categorization
o non-pluralization of count nouns
o reclassification of General American English (GAE) mass nouns as count
nouns
o mass noun pluralization
o pluralization of adjectival nouns in compounds
 
4. Pronoun-antecedent agreement;
 
5. Subject-predicate incongruence;
 
6. Reclassification of GAE transitive verb as intransitive verbs; and,
 
7. Tense-aspect usage consisting of unusual use of verb forms and tenses, use of the perfect
tense where the simple past tense or even present perfect tense is called for in GAE, lack
of tense sequence.
 
 
When does an error become a feature of Philippine English?
If enough educated elites in the society “commit” these errors, then these errors in effects have
been accepted by the society as the standard (Gonzales ,1985)
 
Foregoing discussion only shows how dynamic English is. English has evolved into post-colonial
varieties and should not be mistaken as errors. As the poet Gemino Abad (1997, p. 8) aptly put it.”
English is ours. We have colonized it too.”
 
 
Intercultural communication as you need to be sensitive to the people around you who belong to
different cultural heritages and have their linguistic identity.
 
 
Language Registers/Registers of English
 Register
o understood as the context-specific variety of language to which the field-
mode tenor framework is important.(Lee, 2001)
o a variety of language defined according to its use in social situations e.g. a
register of scientific, religious, formal English (David Crystal,2008)
 o kind of language whose forms are of a definable social situation, regardless
of the status of the participants-thus one finds the register of legal
language, liturgical language, and so on. (Crystal ,1964)
 Hallidayan linguistics
 Seen as specifically opposed to varieties of
language defined according to the
characteristics of the users (viz. Their regional
or class dialect), and is given a sub-classification
into field, mode and manner of discourse
o refers to the formality of language which one speaks.
o determine the kind of lexicon or vocabulary to use as well as the kind of
structure to be used
 Style
o degree of formality attached to particular interpersonal social situation
which is reflected by differences in language. (Crystal, 1964)
 the kind language used while talking to a friend will differ
noticeably from that used in addressing a superior,
 Genre
o associated more with the organization of culture, register is associated with
the organization of situation (Lee, 2001)
 genre of recipe, field may be analyzed in terms of the social
setting and the communicative purpose in which the text is
produced
 Tenor
o described in terms of the roles required of the writers and readers including
the cultural values shared by both
 Mode
o explained in light of the knowledge of other texts required of
speakers/listeners and writers/readers as regards the genre including the
formal text features.
 Legalese or legal language
o highly characterized by archaic expressions, technical jargon intrinsic only to
the community of legal professionals, embedded structures,
nominalizations, passive voice, as well as long, kilometric sentences
 Textese
o used to be limited to a certain number of character/spaces which made
texting much easier and quicker
o opposite-use of abbreviations, acronyms, slang words, and expressions